The big interview
Linda Hamilton on being in the first wave of female action heroes
Along with Sigourney Weaver in Alien, Linda Hamilton led the way as the first of Hollywood’s female action stars. As Sarah Connor in the first two Terminator movies, Linda created an iconic character which, just like the plots from those films, was ahead of its time.
The world is finally catching up and, in the current climate of renewed female empowerment, the time seemed right for the battle-hardened warrior to return in Terminator: Dark Fate.
But Linda, who has just celebrated her 63rd birthday, needed some persuading to put on the black vest and aviator shades again for the first time in 28 years, having previously turned down subsequent sequels.
“It took me a while to decide to do it,” Linda admitted.“it wasn’t the script but just the thought of returning to this whole, big thing again after living such a quiet, normal life for so long.
“Then there is the thought of being compared to yourself as you were back then. That’s not easy for anyone but in the end I knew I had to do it.
“For the past 20 years, fans have been asking me if I would do another Terminator and I would say,‘yeah, as geriatric Sarah Connor in a wheelchair!’
“So here we are and, while the geriatric part is kind of true, we are back picking up this story and these characters 28 years later.”
The “quiet, normal life” Linda speaks of is a world away from the bright lights of Hollywood.
While her original Terminator co-star Arnold Schwarzenegger went on to achieve superstar status, Linda shunned the limelight. She left Los Angeles behind for good seven years ago and wasn’t sure she wanted to give up her new life of serenity to return to the movie star bubble.
“I got myself a farm in Virginia – a very bleak, real farm,” she explained. “There was no air conditioning and it was never warm enough in the winter.
“I lived very authentically, until my parents died, and then I wanted to try New Orleans. I knew I’d never go back to LA. I never go backwards, only somewhere new.
“So when it came to this decision about the film, I didn’t know if I wanted to invite all of that back into my world. I loved my neighbours and my neighbourhood.
“I was living happily ever after in a way that just felt so real. And there is a part of me that feels what took me out of LA was a rejection of Hollywood and all the grandiosity and the inflated egos, inflated boobs and inflated lips. The inflated self-worth.
“If you could have seen my bleak farm, you’d think,‘wow, she really went the other way!’ In New Orleans I’d found a really nice balance and I wasn’t sure I was willing to trade that for another 15 minutes of fame.”
It was the pull of the graft, Linda insists, that finally convinced her to return to the Terminator franchise.“in the end, I love to work. I might not like all the trimmings that come with it, and the whole celebrity thing, but I love the work. It’s not that there hasn’t been other work, because there’s been just enough to keep me going, but this film has been the hardest and greatest thing I have ever done.
“It paid me back so much.” Linda still retains the respect of a ferocious fanbase for her stunning depiction of Sarah, a woman forced to fight for her son, John, and the future of the planet, in the early movies. Set more than two decades after the events of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Sarah Connor sets out to protect a young woman named Dani Ramos and her friends, as a liquid metal Terminator sent from the future attempts to obliterate them. Arnie is also returning to the series, as is original writer-director James Cameron, Linda’s ex-husband and father of her daughter, Josephine.
“He had to call me three times to get me to call him back,” she laughed.
“The third time he called he left a message saying,‘hey, it’s about work’, and I was like,‘oh, hey, what’s up?’
“But, you know, we have raised a child together, and that’s what has to happen for the child to be healthy, to know both
of their parents are on the same page and in their corner. We have worked hard to maintain that, and have been rather successful at it, I think.
“I will do anything, and have done over the years, to generate as much goodwill for our family unit. So that really has not been an issue.”
What was an issue was getting back into action mode after three decades away.
“It was a lot harder than it was before. The brain isn’t as solvent when you’re older because you’re not learning new skills so much. “I had to unlearn the muscle memory from 1991 and rebuild my skills set from there.
“I did military training, stunt training, scuba lessons, Spanish lessons – so my brain is very solvent now.
“It was extremely hard. At one point I was in the desert in Texas sobbing because it was so hard to be fluid with those weapons.
“They loaded me up with 35lbs of weapons and I said, ‘Forget firing the weapons, I can’t even get out of the car! “There were days when I felt like it was almost physically impossible to keep going but we did it.”
It wasn’t just about handling the weapons and carrying out the action scenes realistically. Linda also focused on portraying Sarah in a genuine way.
“Like me, Sarah is now a woman of a certain age and I wanted to keep it real and show that,” explained the mum of two.
“She’s still strong, of course, but it maybe takes her a little longer these days to get back up when things get rough.
“It’s liberating to approach playing a character like that.”
Linda says her initial casting as Sarah was “an accident of timing more than anything else” and she had no appreciation of what they were doing until she first visited the set for the 1984 classic.
If her involvement was down to chance, so too was a decision Linda made for Terminator 2 that she believed enhanced the character.
“Jim (Cameron) wanted me to cut my hair and I said,‘why don’t we just try it in a ponytail?’ What that brought to audiences was true feminine strength and the lesson that you don’t have to look like a man to be a strong woman.
“I honestly think if I’d cut my hair, Sarah would not have been so welcomed as an idea of feminine strength.”
For Dark Fate, Linda has put so much into the film that she feels the same sense of anticipation as the series’ fans, and says this might not be her final time portraying Sarah.
“I normally never get too entrenched in the end results of how a film does,” she added.“i do the best work I can and move on, but in this case I feel totally invested and the nearer we get to the release the more I feel that anticipation.
“I don’t want to let our fans down or the franchise down and I don’t want to let the character down. If this one works, there should be another one that’s even better. That’s always the hope, right?”
There should be another sequel after this one, right?